Hoefler & Frere-Jones

Answers to Frequently Asked Questions

Thu, 01 May 2008 11:00:00 CDT

Just kidding. A beauty though, isn’t it? This page of tastefully arranged number signs comes from a type specimen book issued by the Schelter & Giesecke foundry of Leipzig, around 1900. In a good type specimen, no piece of typographic material is too insignificant to merit proper attention, but to see such a peripheral symbol treated with this kind of thought and artistry is really touching. —JH

Unicode Poetry Slam

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 05:20:00 CDT

I feel certain that I've seen the logo for Fermata Festival on canvas totebags at the greenmarket, and that Fox Fraction is part of the Action 10 News Team. I'm equally convinced that Falling Family and Feathered February are Lifetime Original Movies, and that Fit Fita Five once opened for Afrika Bambaataa at the Mudd Club. Legendary turntablist Fricative Fritu was the driving force behind that act, before leaving to found Forward Fostering Four in 1979; signed to Furx Records, they were one of my favorite bands, along with Flexus Flight Flip and Facsimile Factor — who these days you can catch on Fly FM, home of a great morning drivetime show hosted by Fongman Foo...

Novelists and MCs seeking inspiration are hereby directed to the Unicode Character Name Index, once a mere reference for cosmopolitan type designers, but now also a wellspring of found poetry (and a sure-fire way to blow an entire afternoon.) The above nonsense comes from adjacent entries on the F page, and other letters are no less fertile: doesn't the M page make you yearn for the comeback of wrestling legend “Manacles” Manchu? —JH

Eric Siry adds:

You neglected gangsta rap legend Fat Fatha, Thai-Senegalese throat singer Fthora Fu, and goth pioneers Functional Funeral — as well as the front man's solo excursion into atonal noise rock, Fwa Fwaa Fwe Fwee.

Our Middle Name

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 16:11:00 CDT

Last month’s posts about the ¶ and the ß prompted a flurry of e-mail inquiring about other special favorites in the character set. Matt McInerney guessed correctly that the ampersand is one for which we have special affection, and asked if there was anything else we could say about it. How could we not? Ampersand, after all, is H&FJ’s middle name.

Though it feels like a modern appendix to our ancient alphabet, the ampersand is considerably older than many of the letters that we use today. By the time the letter W entered the Latin alphabet in the seventh century, ampersands had enjoyed six hundred years of continuous use; one appears in Pompeiian graffiti, establishing the symbol at least as far back as A.D. 79. One tidy historical account credits Marcus Tullius Tiro, Cicero’s secretary, with the invention of the ampersand, and while this is likely a simplified retelling, it’s certainly true that Tiro was a tireless user of scribal abbreviations. One surviving construction of the ampersand bears his name, and keen typophiles can occasionally find the “Tironian and” out in the world today.

As both its function and form suggest, the ampersand is a written contraction of “et,” the Latin word for “and.” Its shape has evolved continuously since its introduction, and while some ampersands are still manifestly e-t ligatures, others merely hint at this origin, sometimes in very oblique ways. The many forms that a font’s ampersand can follow are generally informed by its historical context, the whims of its designer, and the demands of the type family that contains it: after the jump, a tour of some ampersands and the thinking behind them, along with an explanation of the storied history of the word “ampersand” itself...

Continues...

Adventures in Kerning, Part II

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 03:16:00 CDT

A kerning table, which makes special allowances for characters that don’t fit together naturally, can reveal a lot about the personality of its designer. Every font pays special attention to the pair Va, but the font that includes Vr suggests a familiarity with French (vraie) or Dutch (vrou). Pairs like Wn or Tx hint at an even broader perspective (Wnetrzne, Poland; Txipepovava, Angola), and the designer who kerns the ¥4 has presumably spent some time thinking about finance. Including ÅÇ is the mark of someone who’s trying too hard: these letters don’t nest together naturally, but nor do they appear together in any language.

When I first learned about kerning, mystifying to me was the presence of Yq in almost every one of Adobe’s fonts. Adobe’s early faces sometimes neglected far more common pairs, or even whole ranges of the character set — many fonts didn’t kern periods, dashes, or quotation marks — but Yq was ever-present. When I met him in the early nineties, Adobe’s Fred Brady hinted at why: located in northern California, Adobe’s designers often had a thing for viniculture, and one of the world’s most famous dessert wines is produced by Château D’Yquem.

We’ve included Yq as a standard kerning pair ever since, though I’d never gotten to see it in action until yesterday. Here, in the window of Sotheby’s on Bond Street, is our Verlag typeface, Yq kern and all. There are kerns obscurer still that we’re waiting to see in public, though I don’t suppose I’ll be seeing the 9th century Old English word wihxð (wax) in the window of Sotheby’s anytime soon. —JH

How We Know Our ABCs

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 02:34:00 CDT

“Collation” is the technical term for the order in which the letters of the alphabet are arranged. Anyone who’s ever glanced at a foreign alphabet has noticed the consistencies that have been preserved over the millennia: our Latin “A, B, C” resembles the Greek “alpha, beta, gamma,” as well as the Arabic “’alif, bā’, tā” and Hebrew “aleph, bet, gimel,” all of which are traceable to the Phoenician “’āleph, bēth, gīmel.” By the time we’ve passed through the Proto-Canaanite “’alp, bet, gaml” to the Ugaritic “alpa, beta, gamla,” we’ve travelled back 3,500 years; what's interesting is that the shapes of these letters are unrecognizable, but their order is utterly familiar.

I came across a passage last night that speaks to the significance of alphabet collation. I’d always imagined that the modern practice of labelling parts for assembly using the alphabet — insert tab A into slot B, etc. — must be a post-industrial innovation, one which relied upon modern standards of literacy. Not so:

Ancient Near Easterners used fitters’ marks, single letters of the alphabet apparently used to indicate the order in which various building materials are to be assembled. Various decorative ivory pieces from Nimrud, Iraq, were letter-coded to show the order in which they were to be inserted into furniture. In a temple at Petra, Jordan, archaeologists found “large, individually letter-coded, ashlar blocks spread along the floor of [a] room ... in the temple structure.” In a 1971 salvage expedition of a ship downed off Marsala, Italy, Honor Frost discovered “letters at key places where wood was to be joined ... the ship assembly [was thus] a colossal game of carpentry by letters, like a modern paint-by-numbers project.”

This is from The World’s Writing Systems, edited by Peter T. Daniels and William Bright. Oxford University Press, 1996. —JH

It’s Alive!

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 06:30:00 CDT

I should have known it would come to this. —JH

Type Tour II

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 13:51:00 CDT

If you missed Tobias's Typographic Walking Tour last September, and weren't one of the 22 lucky callers to register for his 2008 encore performance, you've one more chance. Come to the 2008 FUSE conference, April 13-16 at the Chelsea Piers, where Tobias joins Malcolm Gladwell, Stefan Sagmeister, Debbie Millman, Chip Kidd and other sharp tacks for a three-day exploration of design and culture. The Type Tour begins April 13 at 11:00, and places are limited! —JH

Change We Can Believe In

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 09:33:00 CDT

Above, the new face of British currency, announced by the Royal Mint. The striking new designs, selected from an open competition that attracted four thousand entries, are the work of a 26-year old graphic designer named Matthew Dent. They are Mr. Dent's first foray into currency design.

Below, the new five dollar bill, introduced last month by the United States Department of the Treasury. The new design, which features a big purple Helvetica five, is the work of a 147-year-old government agency called the United States Bureau of Engraving and Printing. It employs 2,500 people, and has an annual budget of $525,000,000. —JH

London Calling

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 03:08:00 CDT

Just a quick note to let Londoners know that the Editorial Design Organization will be hosting an evening of editorial typography, featuring Janet Froelich of the New York Times Magazine, and Jonathan Hoefler of H&FJ. Free to EDO members, £20 for non-members, £5 for students.

American Night at the EDO
Wednesday, April 9, 6:00-9:00pm

Rootstein Hopkins Space
London College of Fashion
20 John Princes Street, W1G 0BJ
Inquiries to Gill Branston, 020 8906 4664

Two Fools

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 12:39:00 CDT

I pretty much agree with Anil Dash on the topic of wacky April Fools’ jokes for websites, so instead I thought that today might be a good day to share a piece of genuine idiocy from the archives.

By the time Tobias and I began working together in 1999, we'd been friends for a decade, and had spent most of the previous years in close contact by phone. Our biographers will report this as a period of august correspondence in which we developed the philosophical framework that would inform our later collaboration, but the truth is that much of this time was spent goofing off, and naturally the arrival of the internet helped this project immensely.

Since we'd always been the types to tackle exhaustive projects, we both spent most of the nineties utterly exhausted. Many of our late night conversations were wits-end grievances about the impossibility of doing something or other, and these commonly degenerated into a discussion of Dumb Ideas for Typefaces. One of these, which I suggested in 1995, was that the OCR-A font — used on bank statements and designed for optical character recognition — really needed to be outfitted with a set of swashes. Using Adobe Illustrator, I ginned up the image above in about ten minutes, and sent it to Tobias. His response, which arrived within the hour, appears after the jump.

Continues...

The Entire 1980s in Three Minutes

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 09:46:00 CDT

Totally loving today: This video for Justice's DVNO, designed by Machine Molle. It just gets better and better; wait for the very end. The very end. —JH

Update: DVNO logos explained. —TFJ

H&FJ Crime-Fighting Division

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 08:24:00 CDT

It was not a dark, stormy night at the H&FJ offices, and she was not a dame in a red dress who spelled trouble with a capital T. It was last Friday afternoon, and the caller was Bill Bastone, founder and editor of The Smoking Gun, with a question about forensic typography.

The story begins with last week's report by the Los Angeles Times that murdered rapper Tupac Shakur was assassinated by associates of Sean "Diddy" Combs. The Times appears to have relied heavily on a set of FBI reports — 302s, in the argot — which cannot be found in the FBI's own files. This morning, The Smoking Gun suggests that these may be the work of an accomplished document forger named James Sabatino, who conducted his hoax from within the walls of the Allenwood Federal Correctional Complex in Pennsylvania.

We're not experts in forensic typography or document authentication, but were able to point TSG's specialists toward one subtle typographic clue. To untrained eyes including ours, the three 302s look like genuine bureaucratic dross: form elements are typeset in a proportionally-spaced font that appears to be Times Roman, and the body of each document is filled in with a typewriter. (The occasional overstruck letter, as well as some very erratic line endings, suggest a typewriter rather than a word processor; never mind that the Bureau stopped using typewriters "about 30 years ago," according to an FBI supervisor.)

But a telltale gaffe appears at the top of one document, in which the date is rendered in the proportionally-spaced font. The "advance width" of the periods are demonstrably narrower than that of the numbers around them (typewriter periods are famously aloof from their neighbors), suggesting that at least this part of the document was prepared digitally — but only this part of the document, and only this one document from the set of three. The Smoking Gun has all three documents online: compare them here, here, and here. You owe me, Diddy. —JH

Selectric Days

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 11:56:00 CDT

My reputation compels me to deny that I ever spent adolescent weekends hanging out at Tannen's Magic Shop or The Compleat Strategist, and I certainly never wasted sunny afternoons playing with the Ohio Scientific computer downstairs at Polk's Hobby Shop (even if it did have Lunar Lander in 16 colors.) But having burnished my nerd credentials through a career as a type designer, it seems safe to admit that, as a teen, I sported an enviable collection of golf balls for the family typewriter, a beloved IBM Selectric II.

Yesterday, a conversation with my friend Tal induced a Proustian flash in which I recalled — and was actually able to find in the studio's library — the above: entitled "GP Technologies Typing Element Handbook," it's a brochure from the early eighties that shows the complete range of styles available for the IBM Selectric typewriter. Sure, I had Courier, Orator, and both Prestige Pica and Prestige Elite, but it was more exotic numbers like these that I really went in for. A major coup was scoring Olde English, warts and all (let's talk about that capital H some time), but my unattainable Philosopher's Stone was Oriental, which no office supply shop in the five boroughs seemed to carry. What I would have done with the typeface is anyone's guess (utility isn't always relevant to the completist), but I can only imagine, given the font's facile design and appalling intent, that it would have been something spectacularly ghastly.

Still, there are things to admire in old Oriental. Its ampersand is a model of efficiency, and the economy of its at-sign (@) is downright clever. That this goofball font was outfitted with such serious accessories as a paragraph mark and a set of fractions hints at the work of a wicked mind, not unlike that of the latter-day typefounder who soberly includes an fffl ligature in text face. Perhaps these are subtle absurdities that lie in wait for attentive eyes, or perhaps they really are useful things to have in a font. In either case, it seems evident that type designers of all ages are, in their hearts, completists. —JH

St. Patrick’s Type

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 09:09:00 CDT

Three of my favorite things are big type, chromatic type, and type specimen books, and St. Patrick's Day offers the perfect occasion to bring all three interests to the table, literally. Parked here at our conference table is the 1904 type specimen of the Roman Scherer company, a wood type manufacturer in Luzern who specialized in two-color type. This page shows the shamrocked "Serie 5401" in the gargantuan size of 40 ciceros — that's a cap height of almost seven inches (173 mm) — which cleverly gives the illusion of a third color by overprinting red and green to produce a perfect black.

The font was manufactured in at least six sizes (more pictures after the jump), none of which have we ever seen in the wild: like the rest of Roman Scherer's other chromatic faces, which I'll post later, these seem to have vanished into obscurity. —JH

Continues...

Digital Analog

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 05:53:00 CDT

Writing about the glories of the nixie tube last December, I wondered aloud whether there's anyone alive who has any affection for the ubiquitous LED display. Today I have my answer.

At RISD, BFA candidate Alvin Aronson has made the witty and beautiful "d/a clock," in which seven-segment LED numbers are made manifest in Corian and wood. There's something irresistable about digital artifacts come to life; watching this mesmerizing video of Aronson's functioning clock, I'm reminded of the Game Music Concerts in which the Tokyo Philharmonic performed the themes from Super Mario Brothers and The Legend of Zelda. Like these, Aronson's work is certainly mordant and entertaining, but it's undeniably Art. —JH

A Font Tip for Leopard Users

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 03:08:00 CDT

One of the unsung features of Mac OS X 10.5 ("Leopard") is Quick Look, a useful tool in the Finder that allows you to preview collections of files at a glance. It's commonly used for images, but Quick Look turns out to be immensely useful for fonts as well, as it allows both fonts and families to be easily examined in detail without ever leaving the Finder.

In the Finder, select a bunch of fonts and hit the space bar. Shown here is the result for Archer; clicking any individual style reveals the core character set for that font, along with buttons for paging through the collection one font at a time. There's even a slideshow mode, and the obligatory animation when switching modes that's completely gratuitous but charming nonetheless. Check it out! —JH

Pilcrow & Capitulum

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 09:00:00 CDT

My last post made passing mention of the pleasures of designing the paragraph mark, prompting one reader to rightly ask, "how much fun can it really be to draw a backwards P?" [No more fun than it is to draw the rest of that font you're using, matey. —Ed.] It may not seem obvious, but the lowly paragraph mark really does offer ample opportunity for invention.

Like most punctuation, the paragraph mark (or pilcrow) has an exotic history. It's tempting to recognize the symbol as a "P for paragraph," though the resemblance is incidental: in its original form, the mark was an open C crossed by a vertical line or two, a scribal abbreviation for capitulum, the Latin word for "chapter." Because written forms evolve through haste, the strokes through the C gradually came to descend further and further, its overall shape ultimately coming to resemble the modern "reverse P" by the beginning of the Renaissance. Early liturgical works, in imitation of written manuscripts, favored the traditional C-shaped capitulum; many modern bibles still do. A capitulum is by no means out of place in a modern font, either: top row center is H&FJ Didot, whose neoclassical origins suggested the inclusion of a shape from antiquity.

Above, a pageant of pilcrows from some H&FJ fonts, suggesting that the possibilities are indeed endless. There seem to be eight fundamental questions that inform the shape of the pilcrow: (1) Should the form be P-like or C-like? (2) Should there be one stroke or two? (3) Should the bowl be solid or open? (4) Should the bottom of the strokes be plain, seriffed, or flourished? (5) Should the top right corner finish with a serif or not? (6) Should the bowl exhibit contrast to match the alphabet, or be monolinear like the mathematical operators? (7) Should the bowl connect with the first stroke, the second stroke, both, or neither? (8) Should the character align with the capitals, or descend to match the lowercase? Together these simple decisions offer 768 possible outcomes, none of which even begins to anticipate the stylized can-opener of Whitney or the bent paperclip of Cyclone.

In any case, Pilcrow & Capitulum would make a fine name for a pub, and a grand place to host a typographers' wayzgoose. Or perhaps it's a buddy movie about crime-fighting bibliographers: Capitulum wears cable knit sweaters and drinks single malt, and Pilcrow is a ladies' man who drives an Austin Healey. Catch their madcap adventures. —JH

The Sulzbacher Eszett

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 03:32:00 CST

The designers at H&FJ are often asked if there are particular letters that we especially enjoy drawing. Office doodles testify to the popularity of the letter R, perhaps because it synopsizes the rest of the alphabet in one convenient package (it's got a stem, a bowl, serifs both internal and external, and of course that marvelous signature gesture, the tail.) A quick straw poll names a, r, f and e as popular letters too, as well as the figures 2 and 5, and our resident Cyrillist admits a soft spot for the swash capital dje (Ђ.) The back end of the character set definitely invites invention as well: steely designers always appreciate a well-made paragraph mark or double dagger, and we certainly have our fun drawing them.

One character that's especially gratifying to get right is the eszett, if only because it so stubbornly resists being figured out. Eszetts can follow any number of constructions, from the romanized long-s-short-s of Archer to the more Teutonic long-s-meets-z of Verlag. Most fonts strike some balance between these extremes, introducing internal shapes that echo other parts of the character set (as in Mercury) or using simplified geometries that reinforce the philosophy behind the overall design (as in Gotham.)

Historian James Mosley has posted an essay about the eszett to his indispensable Typefoundry blog, which sheds some light on the character's checkered past. (The eszett lives in contemporary German as a ligatured form of the double s, but its very name means s-z; Mosley explains why.) An especially welcome gift from the essay is the correct technical name for the romanized ß: it is the "Sulzbacher form," after Abraham Lichtenthaler, the seventeenth century printer denizened in the Bavarian town of Sulzbach, who is credited with introducing the character to roman printing type. —JH

All The News That’s Fit To Write

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 10:42:00 CST

Photo: Scott Carney

The distance between handwriting and typography is at its greatest in the West. It's been more than five centuries since the Latin alphabet, as we experience it in type, looked anything like letters made with a pen; the very anatomy of our alphabet, with its stonemason's "serifs" and printer's "cases," has come a very long way from writing indeed. It can hardly be surprising that as type has come to represent the official, the sanctioned, and the eternal, handwriting has become an almost trivial appendix to our notion of what letters look like.

It's especially easy for Westerners to forget what a minority opinion this is. Most of the world attaches special significance to the hand-written, and lives with an intimate knowledge of its forms and an appreciation of its cultural and social dimensions. A Chinese businessperson of stature can be expected not only to admire the calligraphy in a colleague's office, but to correctly identify it as the work of Song Huizong, and to discuss its virtues with erudition. Contrast this with his American counterpart, who can go an entire career without needing to learn the name of his corporate typeface.

Both senses of the word "writing" remain united in the Arab world, where calligraphy and literacy are at times inseparable. Nowhere is this more evident than in the offices of The Musalman, a Chennai newspaper published since 1927, which has the extraordinary virtue of being the world's last surviving newspaper written entirely by hand. "We somehow manage to make ends meet," says one of the newspaper's four calligraphers (or katibs) who every day devotes three hours to a single page. "There's no monetary benefit for us, we are just here to learn Urdu."

The handwritten newspaper gained wider attention last summer when Wired dispatched photojournalist Scott Carney to document The Musalman's inner workings. Later this year, we may learn more about the paper's inevitable entanglement with digital typography, when Premjit Ramachandran releases his documentary film The Last Calligraphers. —JH

More about Urdu, the Nastaliq script, and the calligraphy of the Islamic world.

...and Non-Fontogenic...

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 11:00:00 CST

A journalist recently asked what it is about Gotham that we think suits the Obama campaign. We'll defer to designers John Slabyk and Scott Thomas to make that call — they selected the font for Obama for America, we merely provided it — but one thing we can say as type designers is that Gotham isn't pretending to be anything it's not, which makes it an unusual and refreshing choice for a campaign. Political typefaces have a way of being chosen because they underscore (or imagine) some specific aspect of a candidate, working hard to convey "traditional values" or "strength and vigilance," or any number of graspable populist notions. The only thing Gotham works hard at is being Gotham.

2008 is clearly a year of unusual thinking in political circles, because none of these familiar approaches can explain the utterly confounding typographic dress chosen by Senators Hillary Clinton and John McCain. Hillary's snooze of a serif might have come off a heart-healthy cereal box, or a mildly embarrassing over-the-counter ointment; if you're feeling generous you might associate it with a Board of Ed circular, or an obscure academic journal. But Senator McCain's typeface is positively mystifying: after three decades signifying a very down-market notion of luxe, this particular sans serif has settled into being the font of choice for the hygiene aisle. One of McCain's campaign themes is "Making Tough Choices:" is this the one you would have made? — H&FJ

Fontogenic

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 03:34:00 CST

Veteran campaigners know that the best way to gain someone's vote is to be photographed holding their baby. It seems that the same goes for fonts: it's hard to take a non-partisan stance when one of the candidates looks so good standing in front of your typeface. Helvetica director Gary Hustwit shared this image with us, along with a hopeful observation about both the candidate and the typeface behind him:

"I think it’s interesting that the design of Gotham was influenced by early Modernism, another movement that was about change and social idealism. And I like that the design aesthetic that may help move Obama into the White House was inspired by the humble NY Port Authority Bus Terminal sign."

A Font We Can Believe In, from the Helvetica Film Blog. —JH

Stupendo Memento Mori

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 08:46:00 CST

BREAKING — Wrong Font Chosen for Gravestone.

And it's not the first time. —JH

Fantasy League Typography

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 07:12:00 CST

One of the things I most love about the design of the late nineteenth century is its unpredictability. Across all of the decorative arts there was a strong emphasis on novelty, and a succession of new technologies made it easier than ever to execute these strange and untested ideas. (You can see this in the terra cotta work of architect Louis Sullivan, or the elaborate inlays of furniture designer Gustav Herter.) The period was a riot of ornament, and to be sure, much of the work was awful: most of what we remember today is hopelessly cliché, or cloyingly overwrought. But then there are moments like these.

Above is a piece of nineteenth century engraving, which looks as if it might have been the product of a CalArts group project by Wim Crouwel and Louise Fili. (The rest of my fantasy league is no less oddball; images after the jump evoke Jonathan Barnbrook vs. John Downer, and Max Kisman vs. Marian Bantjes.) As for where they came from...

Continues...

Politics Without Gotham

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 06:29:00 CST

Not all political typography has to be set in Gotham (though it seems that way) — here for example are some calls to action by Shepherd Fairey that don't use any Gotham at all. They use Knockout No. 48.

Designers in Louisiana, Nebraska, Washington, and Maine have primaries this weekend; Virginia, Maryland and DC, you're up Tuesday. This means you. —JH

Downloadable Progress poster by Shepherd Fairey

The Evolution of Tech Logos

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 16:53:00 CST

It took a visit to Finland in 1996 to realize that Nokia the cellphone company and Nokia the tire company were one and the same. Apparently these are merely the latest stops on a very long journey: Nokia was founded in 1865 as a wood-pulp mill, on a channel of rapids between two Finnish lakes, all of which goes to explain why the company's original logo was this slightly alarmed salmon.

Neatorama is running a very entertaining look at the evolution of tech companies’ logos, which includes such well-known corkers as IBM's grand typographic globe, and the short-lived Apple logo (that still makes me hear strains of "Carry On My Wayward Son.") Less publicized, with good reason, is the original Canon logo — née Kwanon — which had all the worldly sophistication of a Charlie Chan movie. I'm gravely concerned for the Motorola logo, though: it's memorable, distinctive, and typographically lovely; there's absolutely nothing wrong with it, which means it's probably next in line for the ax. (Xerox, I'm looking at you.) So I'm adding this one to the H&FJ Endangered Logo Watchlist, and offering 3:2 odds on a tragic redesign before the decade's out. —JH.

The Evolution of Tech Companies’ Logos at Neatorama.

Indy Boys Fly The Biggest Heds

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 07:42:00 CST

Now that's what I call a banner headline. Yesterday's Indy Star had a nice enough 180pt Gotham Condensed on page one, but it took a win for the Colts in Superbowl XLI to produce this whopper: a 9,800pt headline emblazoned on the outside of the newspaper's offices. Biggest Gotham ever?

Eli Manning's got to be wondering why, after quarterbacking the Giants to a victory in Superbowl XLII, he hasn't gotten the same reception as his brother Peyton here. Every single one of the New York dailies uses an H&FJ font, and our office buildings are considerably taller: couldn't 620 Eighth Avenue or 220 West 42nd Street manage a Gotham Condensed headline in 50,000pt? (Where's that Christo guy when you need him?) —JH

A Banner Day

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 17:30:00 CST

Primary season means banner headlines, and banner headlines mean condensed fonts. Above, some of our favorite Gothamophiles working hard to cement Gotham's connection to politics; here's Gotham Condensed being put through its paces at a range of sizes. Scott Goldman wins the size prize at The Indianapolis Star — and his state wasn't even voting yesterday!

We'll post some political front pages from the New York papers, provided they ever stop talking about the Superbowl. —JH

Not Playing at a Theater Near You

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 11:18:00 CST

Now appearing at Vanity Fair is a great exhibit of lobby cards from the collection of the late Leonard Schrader. From Schrader's collection of 8,462 items the editors have chosen an attractive and representative set of 36 that celebrates the golden age of lettering, before its ultimate fall to typography.

At left, an excerpt from Saved by Wireless, Joe and Mia May's 1919 epic about which the IMDB is strangely silent. (Judging from the cavemen, presumably it does not deal with the convenience of 802.11; been there, though.) Other highlights include MGM's The Devil Doll, whose inside-out lettering prefigures Roger Excoffon's Calypso typeface of 1958, and Fritz Lang's Metropolis rendered in a whimsical style of lettering that befits the movie's cheery themes of dystopianism, technological isolation, and internecine strife. For ages six and up. —JH

ARCHER: a New Font from H&FJ.

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 08:06:00 CST

H&FJ is delighted to introduce Archer®, a new slab serif in forty styles. Sweet but not saccharine, earnest but not grave, Archer is designed to hit just the right notes of forthrightness, credibility, and charm. Romans and italics in eight weights each, including a delicate hairline for display work, and featuring small caps, fractions, tabular figures, and our Latin-X® character set for extended language support. Now shipping in OpenType, with prices starting at $149, plus special savings when you order two or more Archer packages.

Archer. Exclusively at H&FJ.

Elliott Puckette at Paul Kasmin Gallery

Sat, 26 Jan 2008 09:55:00 CST

If you suspect that my typographic leanings affect my taste for other visual arts, it will come as no surprise to learn how much I love the work of Elliott Puckette. There's a show of her recent work at Paul Kasmin Gallery in New York, which runs through February 23: do not miss it.

An interesting counterpoint to the works themselves is Judith Goldman's interview with the artist, published in the exhibition catalog. Puckette counts Oleg Grabar's study of Islamic calligraphy among her influences, along with the asemic writing of artists such as Henri Michaux. She mentions other influences that are further afield, and less directly evident in her work: the physiognomical portraits of Johann Caspar Laveter, the Celestial Alphabet, and the Walam Olum, among others. But most striking to me was this comment, in which Puckette describes how she began using a razor as a tool:

I warmed up to it slowly. I was looking at penmanship books and doing paintings of the letter O and A, and I thought about making the image negative by painting around it.... I thought, if I scratch it out, that would be easier, and I'd get there faster. Cutting and scratching was a way to slow the line down. In the end it wasn't about adding; it was about subtracting.

What's remarkable is that this is exactly how typefaces are designed: not by constructing letterforms in black, but by drawing counters in white. That Puckette chose an implement for stripping away, rather than building up, is also fascinating: files and gravers, the traditional tools of typemaking, are tools for creating whitespace. (Their profound affect on type design, which cannot be underestimated, is the central thesis of Fred Smeijers' excellent Counterpunch.) I can't help but wonder what a Puckette-designed typeface might look like; perhaps we'll someday find out? —JH

Precisely What the Author Had in Mind

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 08:07:00 CST

Groovy Tech

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 05:15:00 CST

SPY SHOTS FROM MACWORLD!!! If only. This is one of Mark Richards' spectacular photographs from Core Memory Project, his terrific survey of vintage computers. Mark's sexy shot of the DEC PDP8/F explains all those day-glo set dressings in The Prisoner and The Time Tunnel, both worlds in which the higher the technology, the brighter the orange. Like the steampunks who reimagine today's aluminum boxes as a festival of valves and gears and brass, when will we see the Modpunks, who will wickedly return us to a world of ochre cabinets, spooling tapes, and knobs that reassuringly click? (Or are they here already?) —JH

The photos; the book.

Large Hats & Small Caps

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 08:16:00 CST

Having begun the week with Senator Barack Obama's typeface, it seemed appropriate to look back at the typography of campaigns past. Here's a splendid piece of Americana that will be at auction at Christie's next week: a carved polychrome and gilt political hat, dated 1872, from the collection of Marguerite and Arthur Riordan. It captures a number of quintessential period styles: bold sans serifs in caps and small caps, "catchwords" festooned with calligraphic flourishes, and two styles of lettering interrupted by medial spurs. Measuring 25" deep and 18" wide, it's a perfect fit for the head of any 21st century politician. —JH

Powers of 41

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 11:46:00 CST

Ours isn't a government that holds designers in especially high esteem; a glance at the back of the $20 bill says as much. So it was with both delight and surprise that I learned this morning that the U. S. Postal Service is scheduled to roll out this set of stamps next summer, honoring the great contributions of Charles and Ray Eames.

Our entire profession owes thanks to USPS designer Derry Noyes, not only for raising the public profile of design with this marvelous project, but for answering its unique design problems so expertly. The Eames Office worked in two, three, and four dimensions, and to meet the challenge of representing their body of work so concisely — at the size of a postage stamp (a rare, non-metaphorical use of the phrase) — takes tact and aplomb of Eamesian proportions. —JH

A Change We Made

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 06:46:00 CST

Literally: that's our Gotham typeface, as used by Senator Barack Obama. Curiously, John Edwards is also using Gotham, giving the font a combined 68% of the vote in Iowa! —JH

Change.

High Scores for Service and Style

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 06:00:00 CST

With the arrival of a new year comes a new Zagat Survey, and with this year's edition comes a special typographic surprise: a complete redesign using our Whitney family. The indomitable Zagat team has given the fonts one of their most rigorous workouts ever, using Whitney's many special features to excellent advantage — here's some of what's inside.

Pocket guides have an especially compelling need to keep page count low and legibility high, making Whitney's compact forms a good match for the project. In its pro edition, Whitney contains a set of even-width tabular figures, which the Zagat team used for this very clear and sensible wine vintage chart, above.

Since guidebooks feature both maps and numbered lists, a set of numbered indices is often useful. Here, Zagat's heavily-automated pagination system is able to call upon the pre-built Whitney Index font, rather than demanding the intervention of a designer for every single table. (If you've ever tried to make numbers in circles yourself, you know how treacherous they can be — especially when lists spill over into double digits!)

Newsprint is an appropriate choice for a pocket guide, since it helps reduce both weight and cost, but it's an especially hostile environment for typography. To survive newsprint, letterforms need to have clear gestures and open apertures, to prevent their forms from clogging up at small sizes. And because type on newsprint can gain weight unpredictably, sans serifs with a broad range of weights are especially useful. Whitney has six weights, each of which makes an appearance somewhere in the 2008 guide. —JH

More fonts for tables, maps, and newsprint.

Coming Attractions

Mon, 31 Dec 2007 08:39:00 CST

Sure, Kim Hastreiter knows her typography, but how did she manage to so accurately foresee a top-secret font release not scheduled for another hundred years? —JH

Typographic Gifts for Designers, Part 10

Thu, 20 Dec 2007 11:15:00 CST

Harry Beck's map of the London Underground is one of those seminal information graphics that has come to define an entire category. It must be as widely recognized as Mendeleev's design for the periodic table of the elements; it's surely been as influential, and as widely imitated and spoofed.

What makes both diagrams significant is that they bravely dispense with information traditionally thought to be crucial. Mendeleev described matter without any of its physical characteristics, which freed scientists to infer more significant information purely from the table itself. And Beck realized that the scale of a city was irrelevant to a commuter (as well as difficult to draw), so he bent the shape of Greater London to meet the needs of the map, in what's technically called a cartogram.

Mark Ovenden's Transit Maps of the World is a terrific and well-illustrated tour through the world that Beck created. It's interesting to compare the choice of cartograms and equal-area maps in different cities, and at different times: Beck's diagrammatic plan for the Paris Métro was rejected in favor of a beloved but impenetrable drawing, which is just the kind of Gallic gesture that has been confounding the English for centuries. The images in Ovenden's book make it tempting to make inferences about the cultures behind the maps: the diagrams for Moscow, St. Petersburg and Nizhiny Novgorod have an undeniably Suprematist bent, and those for Beijing and Guangzhou look as if they could actually be the Simplified Chinese ideogram for "subway." Closer to home, the map of Los Angeles looks likes an Anasazi petroglyph, and that of Washington, D.C. resembles nothing more than a pit of highly partisan snakes. —JH

Transit Maps of the World, from Penguin Books. $16.50.

Typographic Gifts for Designers, Part 9

Mon, 17 Dec 2007 07:01:00 CST

A visit to Shorpy inevitably lasts the rest of the day. This tremendous archive of hundred-year-old photos has much to recommend it to anyone interested in period typography: the optimistic lettering of the New Deal is well represented, and there's an excellent cross-section of sidewalk Americana as well; entertainingly, the whole collection is leavened by an undercurrent of quiet menace that I find delightfully surreal.

There are impossibly old photos from Antietam and significant ones from Kitty Hawk, but it's candid images like this that I find the most striking. For while it's their farmers and seamstresses and street urchins who draw focus and take center stage, the true subject of these photographs is the lettering in the background, and the thousands of invisible hands responsible for every single letter.

To my delight, Shorpy is now working with the Juniper Gallery to produce reproductions of some of their most evocative Vintage High-Resolution Photographs. Produced as eight-color giclee prints on a variety of archival stocks, Shorpy's photographs are available in sizes from 19" x 13" (48cm x 33cm) to 47" x 34" (119cm x 86cm). Order by December 18 for Christmas delivery. —JH

Shorpy's Vintage Photographs at Juniper Gallery, from $30.00.

Typographic Gifts for Designers, Part 8

Thu, 13 Dec 2007 00:05:00 CST

The arrival of a new year means it's time for a new Pentagram Calendar. We'll forever be partial to the 2006 edition, for which Pentagram commissioned us to design twelve new fonts of numbers; we subsequently added three additional styles, anticipating of course the post-revolutionary 15-month calendar under which all earthlings will unite in observance of Hoefluary, Frerember and Jonesember. (Reminder: font licenses must be paid in full by Tribute Day, Hoefluary 15.)

But until the revolution comes, enjoy your quaint 12-month ways with the stylish 2008 Pentagram Typography Calendar. 2008 looks like it's going to be a vintage year, for this year's edition is designed exclusively using the typefaces of Matthew Carter. Few things can make January more exhilarating than a brace of Galliard old-style figures, and the appearance of the scarce Walker typeface in February hints at many more treats throughout the months to come. —JH

Pentagram 2008 Typography Calendar. Large, $36.00; small, $22.00.

Typographic Gifts for Designers, Part 7

Wed, 12 Dec 2007 06:48:00 CST

It's hard to begrudge the polish and flexibility of a good pixel, but I'll always have a soft spot for the earlier technologies. Mechanical and electronic displays with fixed images were somehow knowable in a way that screens are not, lending a palpable something to the things they inhabited. Has train travel been the same since the disappearance of the thip-thip-thipping flap display? Didn't buses seem more resolute when emblazoned with hand-lettered roll signs, before today's dot-matrix mayhem doomed them to speak in half-hearted and confounding abbreviations (or cheerily exclaim Out of Service as they malingered along?) Has the person yet walked the earth who has fond feelings for the starburst display of a credit card terminal?

One of my favorite outmoded technologies is the nixie tube. A tiny vacuum tube containing individual glowing cathodes for each digit, nixies were once a staple of high-end office calculators and measuring devices. Every few years, someone unearths a cache of virgin nixies and brings a nixie clock to market, which promptly sells out; this year's offering is the Chronotronix V400 Nixie Tube Clock, an especially attractive contender in a polished cherry case, candidly offered in a limited edition. —JH

Dual-voltage Chronotronix V400 Nixie Tube Clock, $415.00.

Typographic Gifts for Designers, Part 6

Mon, 10 Dec 2007 11:36:00 CST

I've yet to meet a designer that didn't have a thing for cartography. In any medium (to this day, maps are printed, engraved, drawn and painted) cartographers have to be excellent and inventive typographers, and mapmaking has given typography some of its most interesting styles. Some of the more exotic letters we've drawn certainly owe something to mapmaking, in this case the engraved maps of the very fertile Age of Enlightenment.

Equally interesting are the artists and designers who interpret maps. I hope to someday own one of Paula Scher's fantastic paintings (which incidentally are on display at New York's Maya Stendhal Gallery through January 26), but in the meantime I might outfit myself with one of the five City Neighborhood Posters from Ork Design. Chicago, San Francisco and Boston are represented, as well as Manhattan and Brooklyn; gift certificates are available for the itinerant among us. Hand screen printed, and signed and numbered, $22 each. —JH

City Neighborhood Posters from Ork Posters, $22.00.

Typographic Gifts for Designers, Part 5

Sat, 08 Dec 2007 07:17:00 CST

If there's one thing that says Gotham Fabulous, it's rhodium-plated silver with a hit of CZ. Sara found these Initial Pendant Necklaces online, each offering 0.2 carats of genuine cubic zirconium in a tarnish-free setting. A full alphabet's available, though sadly no ampersand, otherwise the whole H&FJ posse would be rolling in style.

A classier alternative is this stunning diamond necklace by Irina Block. But either option requires a primo backup gift. —JH

Sterling Silver CZ Pendant Necklace, $12.99.

Typographic Gifts for Designers, Part 4

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 02:27:00 CST

Every design studio has at least one of Edward Tufte's books. They're traditionally distributed during the sacred initiation ceremony through which one becomes a Graphic Designer: a cloaked celebrant makes the sign of command-option-escape and anoints the novice with toner, the congregation recites the paternoster from Paul Rand's Design, Form, and Chaos, and the now-ordained Designer is presented with the Holy Relics that will form the heart of his or her own workplace: a manga-inspired wind-up toy, a framed fruit crate label with a smutty pun, an overwrought and temperamental stapler with a European pedigree, and a copy of Envisioning Information.

Whether you share Tufte's love of clarity, or haven't read his books and simply want the shortcut to intellectual street cred (I'll deal with you later), you'll want a copy of this poster showing Napoleon's March to Moscow, which Tufte correctly calls "probably the best statistical graphic ever drawn." Designed by Charles Joseph Minard in 1869 and now reproduced by Graphics Press, the diagram simultaneously shows the position, direction, and strength of Napoleon's army, as well as the time and temperature at each turn — a remarkable amount of information for such an intuitive and tidy diagram. —JH

Poster: Napoleon's March. 22" x 15" (56cm x 38cm), $14.00.

Typographic Gifts for Designers, Part 3

Thu, 06 Dec 2007 10:27:00 CST

Much nattering takes place on this blog about the distinction between lettering (letterforms rendered for a particular situation) and fonts (sets of type designed for reproduction.) Edible lettering is an ancient tradition, but edible fonts may be something new: our designer Sara Soskolne discovered this marvelous set of Movable Type in Chocolate, created by Sandra Kübler and Christine Voshage.

I have to commend the duo for including a broad character set, including accents and punctuation. (The Droste company, which makes the chocolate initials given to Dutch children for Sinterklaas Eve, doesn't produce even the letter I, presumably because it's challenging to design a chocolate I that matches the weight of the M or W.) As we know, children are a stickler for fairness, especially when it comes to chocolate, just as typographers are a stickler for fidelity, especially when it comes to chocolate. —JH

Typolade: Text aus Schokolade. From € 0,60/character.

Typographic Gifts for Designers, Part 2

Wed, 05 Dec 2007 10:19:00 CST

A few weeks ago, I posted some scans of nineteenth-century wood types by William Page, from the rare specimen book Wm. H. Page & Co. Wood Type of 1872. The designers at the Cary Graphic Arts Press (Rochester Institute of Technology) apparently share my love of Page's colorful woodtypes, for their lovely Wood Type Notecards reproduce some pages from the exceedingly rare Specimens of Chromatic Wood Type, Borders, &c. of 1874. I don't imagine I'll need much of a pretext to send these to my favorite typophiles; I think I'll save the SIN cards to send to clients who don't correctly use small caps or smart quotes. —JH

Set of eight Wood Type Notecards, $7.00.

Typographic Gifts for Designers, Part 1

Tue, 04 Dec 2007 10:48:00 CST

Since the countdown to the holidays has begun in earnest, we thought we'd dedicate the rest of the week to recommending typographic-themed holiday gifts for the designers in your life.

Our own Ksenya Samarskaya liked these Alphabet Mugs from Fishs Eddy. The monograms draw from different decorative traditions: the A and C are from decorated American wood types (and you know we love those), the T from signwriting, and the K and Y from nineteenth-century lettering manuals. (That I love the baroque O, Q, and R should come as no surprise; they're close cousins of both the H&FJ logo, and the News, Notes & Observations banner above.) —JH

7 oz. Alphabet Mugs, from $10.95.

Aesthetic Apparatus Explained

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 07:25:00 CST

I started a typeface called Feldspar in 1999, which I've yet to complete. After eight years, most such projects would have lost their inertia, but this one's moving steadily along, driven by a single, fervid dream: I am determined to one day see it in the hands of Dan and Mike at Aesthetic Apparatus.

Aesthetic Apparatus is one of those studios we love to see using our fonts. It's not merely because they're fans of our more American-inflected designs (above, some AA posters featuring Cyclone, Acropolis, Gotham, Knockout, Ziggurat, and Giant), it's because they put the screws to the fonts: they juice them for every last drop of flavor, and then come back to coax still more out of every design, creating new and unexpected textures that you wouldn't think possible. The driving philosophy behind the studio's work is — well, here: let's let Dan and Mike explain the process in their own words:

A transcript is not yet available. —JH

An Early Snowtype

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 11:01:00 CST

The snow-themed alphabets below all belong to the world of lettering rather than typography, but typefounders have made their share of snow-covered fonts as well. Some of these go back quite a bit further than I imagined, as I learned this afternoon: at lunch, Tobias mentioned offhandedly that he remembered being surprised to see a snow-covered typeface in a specimen book from Weimar Germany. "I don't remember which book it was," he added, a sure-fire way of triggering a typographic wild goose chase at the office.

Half an hour later, and covered in dusty fragments of brittle yellow paper, we found it. Naturally it was in none of the specimen books that we thought to check first, from the Bauer, Berthold, Klingspor, Ludwig and Mayer, Schelter & Giesecke, Schriftguss, Klinkhardt, C. E. Weber, or Flinsch foundries. It was lurking on page 120p of Die Haupt Probe, otherwise known as The Behemoth: the 1,478-page, six-kilogram, scanner-breaking type specimen of the Stempel Foundry, issued in 1925, and thought to be the largest typefoundry specimen book ever produced. Behold Schneekönigin, a snow-capped adaptation of the Fette Teutonia typeface. Like the book that contained it, it is equal parts delightful and menacing. —JH

More Wintry Gotham

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 09:44:00 CST

Over at Saks Fifth Avenue, they've decked out their signature Gotham Medium in snowy finery for winter. The snowflake treatment is a nice counterpoint to the icicled Gotham below, conveying luxe rather than hypothermia; in any case, it's the second seasonally-themed Gotham I've encountered this week. Any others? —JH

Holiday Gifts for Typophiles

Wed, 28 Nov 2007 12:31:00 CST

An office full of type designers is already a dangerous a breeding ground for the highly contagious chronic arrowmania, but H&FJ alumnus Kevin Dresser has taken things to the next level with the DresserJohnson Arrow Ring. A chic adaptation of one of the duo's great icons (their logo for Brooklyn Bunny is one of my fondest memories of modern logodom) the Arrow Ring makes possible marvelous moments of unwitting self-annotation such as this. A great stocking-stuffer, available in sizes 2-13. —JH

Arrow Rings on Flickr. Add yours!

Ice Ice Typeface

Mon, 26 Nov 2007 11:10:00 CST

I'll admit it: snow-covered typography is a guilty pleasure, and one I get to enjoy throughout the year. Summertime icicle fonts are never hard to find, once soft-serve ice cream trucks establish strategic flanking positions on either side of our office. And in the winter, their appearance on the sides of HVAC trucks heralds the return of seasonal boiler problems, a cherished part of the winter experience in New York.

Although all H&FJ fonts are guaranteed frost-free for easy maintenance, the wags at Deitch have come up with this seasonal adaptation, in keeping with their site's summer delight theme. Under these snowcaps is our very own Gotham Bold font, artful iciclized by illustrator/guitarist Rick Froberg. So great! —JH

Helvetica for the Holidays

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 10:36:00 CST

Christmas is about more than just eggnog and carols and sitting by the tree. It's about having to explain to your family yet again what exactly it is that you do for a living, and suffering through comparisons with your cousin who's "also into computers."

If there's anything that mom and dad truly need this holiday season, it's to be tied to the andirons and belabored about the head with a copy of Jan Tschichold's collected essays in the original German (still available in hardcover.) But in the spirit of giving, as well as various local ordinances, get them instead a copy of Gary Hustwit's Helvetica on DVD, which goes on sale today. It's smart, engaging, witty, and a great introduction to graphic design for the non-designers who spawned you. It also affords ample opportunity to use the phrase "that's Hoefler & Frere-Jones: I buy fonts from those guys all the time," which mom and dad might remember come next year. —JH

I, Calligrapher

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 10:28:00 CST

Robots have long been useful in completing challenging or hazardous tasks: dismantling explosives, assembling automobiles, winning chess tournaments, etc. Robotlab in Karlsruhe, Germany, is training them for another purpose: calligraphy. Above, an articulated limb renders the Luther Bible in a primitive but serviceable version of the schwabacher script.

This innovation can't come a moment to soon. For thousands of years, human calligraphers have subjected themselves to years of difficult study, exposing themselves to demanding physical conditions in the service of the written word. Even with the advent of non-toxic ink and cruelty-free vellum, calligraphy is not without its hazards: in addition to carpal tunnel syndrome and asthenopic eye strain, careless practicioners often suffer the socially sclerotic effects of Renaissance Faire attendance or absorptive Tolkienism. Most chillingly, mounting evidence suggests that even in industrialized nations, calligraphy is becoming a popular pastime among children.

Thankfully, technology is coming to our rescue. As these photos suggest, robot calligraphers may soon be employed to create that common household object, the hand-lettered bible in roll form. And overhead, without any fuss, the stars are going out. —JH

Lettering Obituary

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 13:01:00 CST

Gertel's Bakery, 1914-2007, died last week from complications arising out of escalating land prices, finally succumbing to demolition on November 2. It was 93.

Born at 53 Hester Street, Gertel's storefront had long been a fixture of Manhattan's Lower East Side. Between the early forties and late fifties, the store acquired a new facade, with the store name rendered in a carefully executed script, and a "streamer" below. The auxiliary lettering, including the memorable one-liner "Bakers of Reputation," was made in the contrasting "gaspipe" style of flat sides and rounded tops.

In a daring (and endearing) move, its neon sign included three different forms of the letter "E," which friends recall fancifully as a nod to the neighborhood's melting pot history. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, Gertel's was regularly photographed in public, though often unable to hide the tragic effects of irreversible sun damage.

Gertel's will likely be survived by a condominium, Luxury, and an awning, Arial. —TFJ

Photo: Jeremy Perez-Cruz, 2007

Fonts on Television

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 13:00:00 CST

Thanks to a few well-traveled blogs, this clip has been getting some traffic lately: it's a segment about typeface design that ran on CBS Sunday Morning last summer, featuring us. Correspondent Russ Mitchell spent some time at H&FJ, and speaking with Steve Heller, to introduce non-designers to the strange world of font design.

Now that the clip is easily freeze-framed, a few designers have written to ask about the fonts themselves. (The opening montage features our Shades and Didot families, and the fonts created for People magazine are part of Verlag Compressed.) But two frighteningly hardcore individuals have outdone themselves, writing to inquire about the font shown at left. In this candid scene, which is definitely not staged at all, the camera captures Tobias and I discussing a font proof. Gentle stalkers, you are correct! What appears here is part of our work for The Nature Conservancy, and you'll find a more extensive look at it here. —JH

A Living Fossil on the 1 Line

Fri, 02 Nov 2007 10:01:00 CDT

Photo: David W. Dunlap, The New York Times

Passing fancies in lettering often vanish without a trace, and no style has died a harder death than Art Nouveau. Even in its heyday, the style's contributions to typography were slight: there were never many Art Nouveau typefaces, and the few eccentrics that have survived may owe something to a resurgence in the sixties, when their smoky and vegetal forms found favor among the psychedelic set. It was not typography but lettering in which Art Nouveau reached full flower — sometimes literally — famously in the posters of Alphonse Mucha, and the Paris Métro signs of Hector Guimard.

Parisians have guarded their Art Nouveau treasures well; New Yorkers less so. New York was no stranger to the style — two blocks south of our office is Ernest Flagg's splendid Little Singer Building, and it was in the borough of Queens that Louis Comfort Tiffany established his factory — but lettering from the period has become scarce. This morning, David W. Dunlap writes in The New York Times of a new piece of lettering that has surfaced, in of all places, the uptown platform of the No. 1 subway line at Columbus Circle. A visit is yours for $2.

Dunlap's article contains the full and fascinating story, including this irresistable opener: this lettered encaustic tile, specially created for the station, is somehow older than the trains themselves. —JH

The Timeless Typography of Harper’s Bazaar

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 10:45:00 CDT

ASME has announced its winners for Best Cover of 2007, and we're thrilled to see that of the six covers that feature typography, five are clients of H&FJ. You'll see Chronicle on the cover of O, and our forthcoming Sentinel font on the cover of Texas Monthly. But especially gratifying is the 2007 award for Best Fashion Cover, which went to Harper's Bazaar: it was Bazaar who commissioned our H&FJ Didot typeface in 1992, and fifteen years later, they're still winning awards with it.

The flagging magazine that Liz Tilberis and Fabien Baron reinvented in 1992 has earned a place as one of the most significant redesigns in modern history. It debuted with an iconic cover that ASME ranks as one of the top ten covers in history, memorable not only for its striking portrait of Linda Evangelista, but for its arrestingly simple typography: in a font commissioned to be as crisp as possible, there appeared the single headline "Enter the Era of Elegance." In an age when it's not uncommon to run the entire table of contents on the cover, this was a brave and startling move. It's telling that this same strategy is still serving Bazaar after all these years, and it speaks to the strength of the magazine's editorial vision and the thought that went into its typography. So thanks to Stephen Gan and Glenda Bailey for including us in your continuing tradition, and to Fabien Baron and Liz Tilberis for making us a part of this extraordinary institution. —JH

A pageant of Bazaar covers celebrates 140 years of continuous publication.

But Wait, There’s More:

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 17:00:00 CDT

It's too good.

BOO!

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 11:00:00 CDT

The Pompadour typeface, from the 1837 specimen of the Tarbé foundry.

Happy Halloween.

Love Letters from Plum Press

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 16:48:00 CDT

You can always tell when a typeface designer is involved. Some unseen force summoned me across the room to this beautiful set of greeting cards, resplendent in rich stochastic color, and bearing a wonderful assortment of letterforms. The choice of typeface for the letter K was enough to identify their designer as a connoisseur: it's Sapphire, a rare and underestimated typeface by none other than Hermann Zapf (1953), and one of my personal favorites. The others in the series have their own stories, as I would soon learn from their designer: it's our very own Sara Soskolne, who designed them for Plum Press.

The P is modeled on a Photo-Lettering face called Johnson Grafin Hedda, and the F and C are adapted from an 1884 set of French signpainter's specimen sheets titled Modèles de Lettres. In nice counterpoint to the luscious outside, inside each is an inscription set in our own H&FJ Didot font. The complete collection features eight cards, covering for a range of appropriate occasions; I'm stocking up on the the apology card, K is for Knucklehead, in anticipation of future bad behavior. —JH

See the full collection at Plum Press.

Fonts in Space

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 13:57:00 CDT

Our erstwhile language researcher and font developer Luke Joyner (not pictured) files this dispatch from the campus of the University of Chicago:

A recent late-show at U. Chicago's Doc Films was Plan 10 from Outer Space, a stinker of a B-movie that's somehow unrelated to Plan 9 from Outer Space, Ed Wood's better-known cult classic. Plan 10 includes the standard staples of the genre: extraterrestrials with beehives for heads, musical numbers, an assassin in the employ of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and a major plot point involving typography...

Continues...

Grecian Fonts: A Miscellany

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 21:33:00 CDT

I thought I'd bid farewell to H&FJ Greek Week with a glimpse inside some of our library's more exotic type specimens. After the jump, some stellar Grecian typefaces which have yet to be properly revived, and the type specimen books in which they're showcased so well.

The above is unusual: it's the 10-Line Grecian Double Extra Condensed of William Page (1872), and eagle-eyed readers may have noticed that it's printed not in black and white, but in retina-searing magenta. Why? It's because...

Continues...